Finish affects guitar tone?
- Thread starter Murmel
- Start date
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caughtinamosh
SS.org-er
Scientific Fact: Purple guitars sound better.
I know it sounds weird, but who am I to question science?
On a serious note, I know that Dan (member dpm) from Oni Guitars believes that the finish type has an effect on the instrument's tone. I'm inclined to take his word for it.
Caveman
Caveman
i have two instances of paint choking guitars. once i got a spray painted charvel from a kid for free. it honestly sounded like somone slapped some pickups on a ply wood board. i sanded it down painted it black and white. kept the same bridge and pickups and electronics. now it sounds like a nice charvel with a slight usa fender touch. and another time my friend had a natural finish poplar gibson with a mahogany neck and had me paint it white to be more like metallica (i acutally charged him extra because i thought it was desicration of a beautiful guitar) and afterward the tone was duller and kinda had that chuck wood body sound. in my experience id have to say that painting a guitar tends to sorta focus the sound and dampen it. not always bad nessasarily. but you should never over paint a guitar.
^ 
Yep, finish makes a difference, sometimes very noticeable depending on the thickness, mass, and stiffness of the finish and the resonant properties of the guitar itself. It's a dampening agent essentially, kind of like how bitumen spays and tapes are used on car panels to dampen road noise, though that's a more extreme example.
Anything that effects the acoustic properties of an electric guitar also effects how it sounds plugged in. What you're hearing in each case is the vibration of the strings. I tend to think of every part of a guitar as a kind of filter that attenuates various frequencies of the string's energy in greater or lesser degrees, ie. it gets dampened. When you strike a string the energy produced gets absorbed by everything it's connected to. The unabsorbed frequencies make the string vibrate in certain ways and that remaining vibration is what we hear acoustically and also what the pickups sense disturbing their magnetic field. The pickups themselves are also a filter, as is every component right through the the grille cloth and room properties.
Yep, finish makes a difference, sometimes very noticeable depending on the thickness, mass, and stiffness of the finish and the resonant properties of the guitar itself. It's a dampening agent essentially, kind of like how bitumen spays and tapes are used on car panels to dampen road noise, though that's a more extreme example.
Anything that effects the acoustic properties of an electric guitar also effects how it sounds plugged in. What you're hearing in each case is the vibration of the strings. I tend to think of every part of a guitar as a kind of filter that attenuates various frequencies of the string's energy in greater or lesser degrees, ie. it gets dampened. When you strike a string the energy produced gets absorbed by everything it's connected to. The unabsorbed frequencies make the string vibrate in certain ways and that remaining vibration is what we hear acoustically and also what the pickups sense disturbing their magnetic field. The pickups themselves are also a filter, as is every component right through the the grille cloth and room properties.
Caveman
Caveman
honestly i think the most underratted part of tone is your fretts. a guitars tone totally opens up when you give it a good fret job. so many people dont realise how much sustain and resonance they lose from shotty frets with too low of action. even if it doesnt make a definate buzz it can still tend to dampen the tone quite horrendousely
Caveman
Caveman
some guitarist know what batteries are in thier pedals. some think the knobs on their amps are broken because they dont notice anything change when they turn them. ahhahah.
if your so inclined to be picky enough i guess at least you'll have a definate preference.
if your so inclined to be picky enough i guess at least you'll have a definate preference.
Banana Wedgie
Bored 13 year old
Scientific Fact: Purple guitars sound better.
I know it sounds weird, but who am I to question science?
I'm not gonna question science either, but they do look biasedly better
Caveman
Caveman
im sanding down my epi explorer as i feel the finish dampens the tone, also because i really dont like the matt black finish when theres a slab of mahogany under it
Cheers to that explorers look best natural. and look especially cheesy with a diamond plate steel cut out screwed to it
